My windows PC just crashed, (luckily after I just installed Linux 8.0 on another system). Is it possible to connect my windows PC hard drive and access the files using my Linux box? If so, where should I look to get started?
If using FAT16 or FAT32 on Windows partition then it is very easy. If using NTFS more difficult.
1: Create a mount point for the drive. Like /mnt/windows or /mnt/dos.
2: Need to know how the drive is partitioned and what linux sees the drive as.
-- Is the drive SCSI or IDE
-- If IDE, is the drive primary or secondary, then master or slave.
-- Primary Master HDA
-- Primary Slave HDB
-- Secindary Master HDC
-- Secondary Slave HDD
To see how partitioned type fdisk /dev/drive_type like /dev/hda
Then type p to print the partition table. Look to see if there are multiple partitions. Just type q to exit with out saving anything.
3: Now that you know what to mount and have create where to mount, now you mount the drive.
mount /dev/drive_type /mnt/mount_point
If partition is fat then should mount without any problem, if it is NTFS, then you will need to recompile the kernel and add NTFS support.
You can also add the -t option to mount to specify the type of partition.
mount -t vfat or ntfs /dev/drive /mnt/mount_point
Hope this gets you what you need.
BTW Win2K, WinXP, and WinNT all use NTFS by default.
Win9X, WinME, and DOS use fat32 or fat16.
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